Chapter Three

THE NEW MARKETS

While the market for the eighteenth century landscape garden was small, restricting itself to people with sufficient land to express it, the style of the Victorian period could be expressed in a tiny front garden just as well as below the terraces of a country mansion. There was, therefore, an entirely new, and vast, market waiting to be tapped.

The sudden expansion of the economy of late Georgian Britain, which made most parts of the country the envy of Europe, occasioned a widespread increase in personal wealth. This was not only the result of people's direct involvement in trade or industrial development; there were whole new professions that developed (like the vast ranks of clerks) who were needed to service businesses, banks, factories.

Almost everyone else, whether lawyers, doctors, actors, publicans, hotel owners, prostitutes, professors, bakers and milliners shared in the rivers of gold that both city and sometimes the countryside were beginning to generate. Naturally, not all this new money went on daily needs; much of if was spent conspicuously, as today, on houses and land (though we may regret the loss of architectural style between then and now). By the earliest part of the Victorian period, there were huge numbers of owners of comfortable and generally elegant villas, terrace houses (of all sizes, from the grand palace-fronted terraces of Regents Park, or the New Town of Edinburgh), to tiny artisans the early years of the century, when he and others (notably the Edinburgh printer and dilettante gardener Patrick Neill) began a long and rather fruitless attempt to codify what were really 'sumptuary' regulations defining the new class system more clearly. They tried allotting each segment of each class a particular degree of gardening or housing, which they thought socially important to uphold, and vulgar to exceed (for instance, farmers were not expected to grow peaches or the better varieties of grape, which should only be found in gentlemens' gardens). Such classificatory attempts were really a symptom of the radical social changes that were underway. The changes are quite clearly mirrored in the garden publishing of the times.

'The Suburban Gardener', for instance, gives this definition of the various possible sorts of suburban house . A 'fourth rate' one was suitable for the occupation of mechanics and had two rooms per floor, often with a twelve to fourteen-foot frontage to the whole house. There was often a rear stair, sometimes open to the elements, and a small back garden. The same 'rate' could also include artisans' dwellings and those of the lowest grades of clerk, though they more commonly lived in houses with a fifteen-foot frontage, a twenty-three foot depth, a basement to keep them dry, a cellar, a washhouse, an inside staircase, a parlour floor of two rooms, two drawing-rooms with folding doors, and two bedrooms.

Third rate houses were grander: a width of seventeen to eighteen feet (enough for a front door and two windows), and a depth of nearly thirty feet (suburbs like Chelsea and Fulham were mostly third rate). They were by far the most numerous new houses ringing all the great cities and boasted a detached washhouse, even a gig house and stable. Gardens were commonly set at three or four times longer than broad. Second rate houses were for wealthy tradesmen, for professionals, or even for gentlemen. Two to three bays wide, they had service accommodation and higher and better finished rooms.

Loudon may have been a little too early with his innovatory idea (for marketing a garden book, that is, rather than for the content of the gardening material, most of which had been around for a decade or more). His wife republished much the same information twelve years later in the The Villa Garden of 1850. The word 'suburban' had been dropped from the main title, for it was already becoming a liability. It was not dropped altogether, though, and the full title was now: The Villa Gardener, comprising the choice of suburban villa residence: The laying out of the garden and grounds, and the Management of the Villa Farm, including dairy and poultry yard. Adapted, in extent ,for grounds from one perch to ftfty acres and upwards, and intended for the instruction of those who know little of gardening and rural affairs, and more particularly for the use of ladies.” However, though there was no change in the text on garden designing (even though styles had moved on), the book dropped any pronouncements about interior decoration. More significantly, it had also dropped much of the classification of 'rates' of house, and indeed much of the suburban angle. As Mrs Loudon now included some examples of fashionable gardens owned by some very fashionable people indeed, she was clearly aiming the book at a rather higher section of the market than the original concept, or at least hoping to flatter more the buyers who had rather less than fifty acres at their disposal.

The work went through several editions, and was successful enough to produce some imitators. Edward Kemp was a notable example, with his 'How to Lay Out a Garden', a popular work in spite of the deep unimaginativeness of the text. It too went through many editions, and clearly filled a great need. In the preface to the first edition he wrote something that will have struck many modern observers just as strongly: 'Having spent a good deal of time in passing through the suburbs of large towns (particularly the metropolis), the author... has been very much impressed with the incongruity and dullness observable in the majority of small gardens, and has been led strongly to wish that the general appearance of such districts were more gratifying to the passerby, and the arrangement of individual gardens more productive of pleasure to the several occupants'.

He was, as the later text shows, writing for a prosperous part of the suburban market, and a very good deal of it at least leans gently upon Loudon's 'suburban villa'.

In Scotland, too, with the sudden growth of the capital but especially of Glasgow and the industrial towns, publishers eyed the new middle-class market with eagerness. A magazine called 'The Gardener' appeared in 1861, edited by William Thomson, head gardener at Dalkeith Palace. It was specifically designed for suburban gardeners, whose existence was now made possible by the advent of a network of suburban railways. Further, it was aimed at that section of the middle-class market without full-time gardeners or with only casual help. 'It will be our special aim,' Thomson wrote, 'to make it useful to that large and increasing class of the community who, previous to the development of our railway system, lived in cities, but who now live in the country, and who occupy their hours of relaxation from city business in managing, with or without the help of a common labourer, their suburban gardens". A parallel exists with a number of the present day 'glossies' who cater for a new suburban market, but with the twist that the fantasy of the magazine is for country gardens. Alas for 'The Gardener', there were not enough Scottish gardeners of the right sort to keep it in print.

Throughout the period publishers of all levels had a generally profitable time. In early Victorian Britain, there was an enormous growth in numbers and in the market for magazines and newspapers, as printing costs fell and educational levels rose. The market covered almost all possible fields, from politics and crime (one of the most successful sectors), to issues like 'Cleaves Penny Gazette of Variety and Amusement' (set up 1837 as a mixture of instruction and jokes, but which had regular gardening articles). Some papers did very well indeed; the 'Argosy' was launched in 1865 and achieved a circulation of 65,000 in six weeks. Naturally, such rich potential pickings ensured that, even in the field of gardening, there was a wide range of new weekly and monthly publications, mostly (as today) aimed at the lower ranges of the market.

The indefatigable Joseph Paxton started up 'Paxton's magazine of Botany' in 1834, with the title not so much to boost his personal fame, but to distinguish it clearly from the 'Botanical Magazine' already with an august history. His work was much more carefully aimed at gardeners, and with only four hand-coloured plates to each issue, was very much cheaper. There was a lot of what Paxton called 'practical letterpress', much of it written by him. The very first plate, incidentally, was of Ribes sanguineus, the flowering currant, soon in every suburban garden and introduced in 1826.

Sensing yet another gap in the market, Paxton and an associate of his, Lindley, founded the still exant 'Gardeners Chronicle' in 1841. This was a full-blown newspaper, with both national and foreign news, with vast amounts of material sent in by gardeners and scientists, and covering every conceivable aspect of gardening. Unsatisfied even with this, he went on to co-edit the 'Horticultural Register' with Joseph Harrison of Birkenhead. By 1851, the circulation of the 'Gardeners Chronicle' was 6500; this should be compared with that of the far more eminent ' Observer' at 6230, and the 'Economist' at 3826. The 'Gardeners Chronicle' did astonishingly well with its large advertising section, and the year after the Great Exhibition ran page after page of new and very grand adverts for conservatories. Paxton must have been amused to note that many of them made use of the ridge and furrow glazing system that he'd developed for the glasshouses at Chatsworth, and simply added some pretty Gothic decorative details.

A much lesser, but almost more fascinating publication was the 'Cottage Gardener' of 1849. Its full title was 'The Cottage Gardener or, Amateur and Cottagers' Guide to Outdoor Gardening and Spade Cultivation.... conducted by George Johnson (editor of 'Gardeners Almanac' 'Modern Gardeners Dictionary' etc) Contributors: the Fruit-Garden by Mr R Errington (Gdnr to Sir P Egerton, Oulton Park); the Kitchen-Garden; by the editor, and Mr J Barnes (Gdnr to Lady Rolle, Bicton); the Flower-Garden, by Mr T Appleby (Floricultural Manager to Messers Henderson, Edgeware Rd); Greenhouse and Window Gardening; by Mr D Beaton, Gdnr to Sir Wm Middleton, Shrubland Park; the Agrarian Calendar, by Mr J H Payne, author of 'The Bee Keepers Guide"Vol I, London 1849'. That took up almost the whole title page.

It was designed to be first cheap periodical devoted to the small gardener, and appeared every Thursday. It intended to avoid all grand plants, whether pineapples or orchids, and the opening editorial stated that "we shall claim praise, at all events, not more equivocal, if we know a garden in which the Cabbage has been more productive, the Apples more abundant, and the Mignonette more enduring, from information gathered in our columns' It was a lovely idea that was soon to fall by the wayside.

It too was rich in advertising, promoting everything from 'The British Economical Manure Company' to 'Atkinson and Barkers Royal Infant's Preservative', which had as its copy "Mothers, call at your Druggists. . . no stupefactive deadly narcotics! but a veritable preservative of infants. "Then there was Heythorn's Hexagon Garden Nets "patronised by Nobility, Clergy, Gentry... the best and cheapest article for the protection of bloom, fruit and flowers, from frosts, birds, wasps, flies, children and servants..." or Bakers Poultry Preservative, 'A certain cure for all diseases of Poultry, Pheasants etc'.

By 1854, a note to advertisers stated that the magazine sold six thousand copies weekly and "Amongst the subscribers are included GARDENERS, Poultry BREEDERS, and BEE-KEEPERS - Professional and Amateur, - Country Gentlemen and Clergymen. To advertisers desirous of community with these classes, its columns offer EXCLUSIVE advantages..." However, by that date, the title had officially changed to 'The Cottage Gardeners and Country Gentlemans Companion", which made sense of the fact that it was becoming full of articles on both pineapples and orchids, as well as hothouses and conservatories to house them. Even renamed, one reader complained to a 'startled' editor that "Living in a cottage, and being fond of gardening, I began, some time ago, to take in THE COTTAGE GARDENER, and purchased some volumes of back numbers. I find, however, that it takes a much higher flight than its name indicates (for though I see, in several columns, it claims also to be a 'Country Gentlemans Companion', that name is at present abandoned). Now, I do not complain of your having articles for country gentlemen, directions for greenhouses,or even hothouses, and disquisitions on articles quite out of the cottagers reach; but I do think that we, who have been induced to become subscribers to the work in consequence of its professed accommodation to our wants and means, ought to be somewhat considered"

He accuses the editor of being absurd; what the reader wants to know is the best or new sorts of potato and cauliflowers, not new orchids or Cochin China pheasants. His feelings must have been shared by many readers, for the magazine soon folded, and was merged with others under a new title (not an unknown happening today).

A much more successful attempt to capture the same market was the 'Garden Oracle and Economic Yearbook', edited from 1859 by Shirley Hibberd. Basically a very cheap almanac (packed with tradesmen's costing prices and endless lists of prize florists flowers), it also has a useful gardeners' calendar, and oddments on forcing cherries under glass, and such like. It, too, is a mine of fascinating adverts, with pictures of everything from the latest species of Berberidopsis or various new calceolarias, to more surprising things like 'A NEW DESCRIPTION OF ARTIFICIAL TEETH, fixed without springs', and"The Paxton drawing-room Hanging Baskets".

It also contained some of the first coloured adverts, including a glamorous one for the Royal Insurance Company. A few year later, the 'Gardeners Chronicle' was selling full page adverts for the vast ranges of cast iron garden decorations; everything from fancy tazzas for geraniums and verbenas, garden seats, and statuary. Meanwhile, the nursery of William Paul was proclaiming the virtues of roses 'old and new' (famous now for things like Paul's Himalayan Musk and Paul's Scarlet), while Lea and Perrins advertised against fake Worcester sauce. More modern still, there were dozens of quite marvellous advertisements for the latest sort of domestic lawnmowers and rollers.

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Shirley Hibberd must have made enough from editing the Oracle, or from some of the garden books which we have already looked at, to risk a venture that was almost certainly doomed to make a loss. This was the astonishingly grand 'NEW AND RARE BEAUTIFUL LEAVED PLANTS, containing illustrations and descriptions of the Most Ornamental-Foliaged Plants not noticed in any work on the Subject'. This was the first major work heralding the tropical bedding movement. The pictures were of tremendous quality, still hand coloured (1870), and the preface remarked that "It is but recently that the beauty of leaves has been fully recognised, and the passion that has arisen [for them] is one of the newest, but is not at all likely to be transient..." Because such things were so expensive to produce, they were often published as 'partworks', that is, books which appear in weekly installments until they are complete. There were so many of them, of variable quality, that the Gardeners Chronicle actually published monthly lists of the best of the pictures, so that its readers could keep abreast of the latest introductions.

By the 1880's, the market was becoming so demanding of material that books were even being bought from foreign publishers. 'The Famous Parks and Gardens of the World, described and illustrated' is based on a French book called 'Les Jardins' by A Mangin. The gardens shown are drawn from both the real world and the imagination, and range from quite Hollywood-like plates of the hanging gardens of Babylon (and all planted up with incorrectly American opuntias and agaves), some wonderfully romantic graphics, as well a pictures of ancient Rome, modern Vaux, Versailles and Marly.

Finally, in 1871, the most influential magazine of them all set up in business; 'The Garden'. It provided a perfect platform for the crusading energies of William Robinson. Then, in 1875, a dumpy and short-sighted lady gardener walked into the office, and the end of high-Victorian gardens was well in sight. The lady was Gertude Jekyll.

Long before that happened, though, in thousands upon thousands of suburban gardens, new conventions of gardening developed fast. The 'front garden' became an important phenomenon, where part of the land on which the house stood became devoted to public show, rather than for the private convenience of the inhabitants.

It was there that the job lots of bedding plants were assembled around the single seedling of money puzzle, and there where the new cast iron vase or the collection of conch shells were neatly arranged. It was by its path that the Doulton tiles or the 'Patent Ferro-vitreous' edgings kept mud from its pretty tiles to the front door. Even behind the front door, the middle class garden market became ever more specialised; inside most of these middle class houses, terraced or semi-detached, or even standing in fifty acres, were women - and a whole new market.

Because the labour of others was so cheap, many women, even in houses that nowadays do not even have a cleaning lady, had almost nothing to do. Apart from deciding perhaps what the family was to have for dinner, no other domestic duty loomed. In large houses, there were sisters, sisters-in-law, daughters, nieces, and the whole panoply of Victorian female relatives and friends. All needed occupation; all provided an astonishingly rich market for new ideas and ways of filling the time. Gardening provided an almost perfect outlet. It was healthy, involving slight labours, a little of the open air, and a ready access to flowers, with which Victorian ladies were so often compared.

The comparison had also been made for much of the eighteenth century as well. Women had actually studied botany for the last of its decades, even though most botanists were male, and it had been a man who proposed the classification of plants on the number of their sexual parts (it was only in the late Victorian period that flowers for the drawing-room having over-conspicuous parts, had such parts carefully cut away). There had also been a number of well-known gardening ladies, though none had yet become an authority on either garden design, or on the flowers themselves.

By the end of the Victorian period, gardening in all its branches was almost a female preserve, from journalism to the highest reaches of garden design, and it is still today rather much their province; few men will admit to being interested in more than the lawn and the vegetables. However, as we have seen, it was two aristocratic Regency ladies whose gardens vied for being the first to use the 'bedding system'. It was another upper class lady's garden that saw the first of the new violas. Lady Farnborough's garden at Bromley Hill was famous for its beauty, where "the hollyhocks broke the horizon with their obelisks of colour". Then there was the famous flower garden of the Hoole, with its extraordinary rockery, and Mrs Lawrence's over-decorated garden that we've already visited.

Such women must have been only the media-conscious tip of a hidden iceberg of interest in gardens, though when contemporary writers mention the difficulties under which women of almost all the polite classes laboured, it's astonishing that any managed to garden at all. All women, however vital, and even if over six feet tall and as healthy as a horse, were conventionally seen as weak and fragile beings, forever wearing satin slippers on the tiniest of feet, forever at risk of illness from the merest touch of damp or cold, and forever decorative (they seem almost to have been as much of a piece of upholstery as the expensive sofas in the drawing room).

Nevertheless, underneath this oppressive burden, there must have been sufficient of them prepared to throw off oppression to justify the appearance of a number of Regency garden books designed especially for them. Jane Loudon, too, brought out her own example in 1840. Called 'Instructions on Gardening for Ladies', she needs to have almost immediately passages such as "the uses of digging having been thus explained, it is now necessary to say something of its practise, and particularly of its applicability to ladies. It must be confessed that digging appears, at first sight, a very laborious employment, and one peculiarly unfitted to small and delicately formed hands and feet" She goes on to explain what a spade is for and how it is used; "a lady, with a small light spade may, by taking time, succeed in doing all the digging that can be required in a small garden, and she will not only have all the satisfaction of seeing the garden created, as it were, by the labour of her own hands, but she will find her health and spirits wonderfully improved by the exercise, and by the reviving smell of fresh earth" In a fascinating section on the difficulty of dressing as a lady, and yet managing to garden, she shows a picture of "A lady's gauntlet", conventionally small and delicately formed, holding a rose stem, plus clogs and gaiters.

She goes on "The time for digging should always be chosen, if possible, when the ground is tolerably dry; not only on account of the danger of taking cold by standing on the damp earth, but because the soil, when damp, adheres to the spade... Every lady should be careful when she has finished digging, to have her spade dipped in water, and then wiped dry, after which it should be hung up in some warm dry shed, or harness room, to keep it free from rust" Of course, digging was most essential for vegetables, quite obviously a man's department for "Whatever doubts may be entertained as to the practicability of a lady attending to the culture of culinary vegetables, and fruit-trees, none can exist respecting her management of the flower-garden, as that is pre-eminently a woman's department. The culture of flowers implies the highest possible kind of garden labour; only indeed enough to give an interest in its effects. This light labour is, in fact, one of the reasons that the culture of flowers is so generally a favourite occupation."

Similar predjudices are expressed by 'Rosa', one of the first female journalists of the Victorian period. In the 'Cottage Gardener' of 1849 she writes; "I should advise ladies to have as little DUG ground as possible, amongst shrubs and bushes, for it is a perpetual trouble; weeds spring up incessantly, and it is very difficult to get at them. The rose and the sweet-briar tear our bonnets and collars to pieces, and we tread most vexatiously on our raiment when stooping to avoid them" She had all her own borders turfed. She, too found her clothes difficult: "There is no doubt that a lady's dress is not one very well suited for gardening; all we can do to obviate its disadvantages is, we will still I fear find, that actual work in a garden does not improve its appearance. A large apron, and gloves are some protection; but what I have found better is a dark shirt. Gloves are indispensable to prevent the earth getting in at the wrist. I have seen ladies make gauntlets of strong unbleached linen fastened to the glove; this is quite as effectual for protecting the dress and for preventing that sun-burning of the wrist which is the frequent fate of lady gardeners' This self-oppression continued almost to the end of the century, though by then it had a very much sharper edge, and was clearly doomed.

Mrs Earle, writing in 1897, in the best-selling 'Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden' said 'I am merely, like so many other women of the past and present, a patient gleaner in the fields of knowledge, and absolutely dependant on human sympathy in order to do anything at all. I cannot explain too much that the object of my book is to try and make everyone think for himself or herself. Women are still behind the other sex in the power of thinking at all, much more so in the power of thinking of several things at once. I hope the coming women may see the great advantage of training their minds early in life to be a practical denial of Swift's cynical assertion that 'mankind are as unfit for flying as for thinking' Mrs Earle thought perfectly clearly, and made a lot of money.

The conventions about what a woman could do were naturally reflected in the sort of garden she could have. These were generally small and colourful, especially something in the 'Dutch Manner'. By 1850, 'These are very suitable for villa-gardens of small extent, but require to be kept exceedingly neat and trim to be effective, and are very proper for the ladies to exercise upon, and keep in order, as the gravel walks will be more frequently in a dry state than the lawn; not that but a garden with grass between the beds may be partially managed by its mistress, as well as the other". The flora too was restricted, even at the end of the century. Many advertisements appeared for 'Flower seeds for ladies;including everlastings, mignonette...' and so on. White flowers seem to have been popular, perhaps giving rise to white gardens that were the progenitor of famous modern examples.

The flora was also often nostalgic (though why women should be more prone to this feeling than men, or why they had not been prone to it before, is not known). Herbs, columbines and cottage flowers were particularly feminine. Flowers could, of course, be taken indoors, and arranged (though they could not be admitted to the bed chamber, Rosa pointing out that "No highly scented flowers should be permitted there, as they are injurious to health, and affect some persons painfully, but in the open air we can enjoy the strongest perfumes in safety. "

Amongst the flowers, indoors or out, Rosa goes on "Woman has much in her power. Wives and mothers have great duties to perform; they are the mainsprings of the moral world: and even among their fragrant flowers they may cull instruction and impart lessons of wisdom, - for nature has many tongues. The holly and the Christmas rose, belonging as they do to former times and customs, teach us to keep the great festival now passing more in the Christian than the Pagan manner. Let this brilliant flower and glossy shrub repay our care by urging us to value more deeply, and commemorate more suitably the great deliverance wrought by Him who came to 'save his people from their sins'.

Flower arranging seems to have been an innovation of the Victorian period. Since medieval times, and probably earlier, everyone had carried with them small posies of flowers to sweeten the air, and ward off infection (memories of this tradition can still be found in Mediterrranea Europe and the Near East when sprigs of lemon flowers are given to intending travellers). In the seventeenth century, flowers had quite often been cut and carried into the house to decorate the table, and in the eighteenth century, great social occasions were commonly decorated with greens from the orangery, or hired from commercial nurseries who specialised in such business. However, references to any actual arrangements (apart from one suggesting the use of crown imperials to decorate grand rooms; odd because the leaves smell strongly of 'fox'), or methods of putting flowers together, are extremely rare.

However, the decoration of rooms with cut flowers became increasingly important in the nineteenth century, and gave rise, by mid-century, to all sorts of appliances to hold flowers, and keep them fresh. Many of the large bell jars found in present-day antique shops will once have been used to cover a bunch of flowers and preserve them from the heat and fumes of the drawing room (though to protect fresh flowers under glass seems to make pleasure in them worthless).

A popular way of storing flowers in an almost airtight way, was the 'Elizabethan Vase'. In this, a glass dome fitted into a water-filled collar at the top of the vase. The flowers themselves were not in water, but were held in a suitably artistic pose by wet sand. 'Doing the flowers' was an important part of female duties, and doing them well was a sign that all was well with domestic life.

The author of 'Domestic Floriculture' (1874) wrote of bouquets, wreaths and vase decorations: 'In every bright and happy house this is peculiarly the ladies' province, and but a few of the sterner sex can hope to rival them on their own ground". He goes on; "Of late years is has been the custom to ornament the dinner table either with living plants or cut flowers. The heavy and costly epergnes, or the great heaps of flowers and fruit formerly tolerated on the festive board, have now been superceded by more pleasing arrangements." Some of these pleasing arrangements were quite curious; he gives an illustration of a table entirely encompassed by a fancy wirework arch, and suggests that "The wax-like flowers of both the rosy and the white lapageria may be neatly mounted on wires and suspended from the margins of the vase, or from a light and graceful arch, where they look natural, and have a good effect”. Another extraordinary table arrangement shows a central stand with whole tree ferns at each end, and an even more crowded 'Dinner table decorated with ferns' so heavily vegetated that it must have been quite impossible to see through.

Incidentally, the present day custom of of having a dessert of fruit as part of the decoration of the dining table was new in the 1870's; 'It is considered fashionable now to dine a la Russe; and in this case, the dishes of fruit and floral decoration are grouped together, and serve as ornaments during the earlier portion of the repast" Ladies' need to be accomplished flower arrangers extended to almost all aspects of both life, and death.

The everlastings now so fashionable were then (as now) imported from the Continent. In the 1870's, they were particularly used at funerals, and more especially as decorations at the graveside. Tasteful arrangements were usually put under glass shades, where they could be expected to last clean and fresh for several years. Burbidge urges the use of plenty of grasses to give the correctly funereal 'look'.

Dried flowers were also used as decorations for an unlit fireplace, or as a 'garniture de chemine'. While many amateurs dried their own, the flower-sellers were importing sand-dried roses, pelargoniums (no-one seems to do those today), even chrysanthemums and carnations. The empty fireplaces of summer, when not filled with 'drieds', were sometimes treated more exotically, and one illustration of the 1870's shows a "Fireplace decorated with Ferns and Trailing-plants during the Summer". It certainly had all of these, but also included a mini-fountain, though how this was supplied isn't made clear.

Arranging dried flowers and glittering grasses for room or tomb was only one of a wide range of garden 'crafts' which Victorian ladies could fill their time. Such attainments became popular around the middle of the century, and reached their apogee in the seventies. 'Rustic work' garden baskets were, of course, beginning to make their appearance in Regency gardens, though it isn't clear if their owners were also their creators. Even in 1850, though Victorian ladies seems to have been even more delicate than Regency ones, Rosa could write "the ivy basket may now begin to look gay. Rustic stands, roughly nailed together, look extremely well when filled with flowering plants. These things cannot be formed by a lady's hand, and, therefore, in many cases cannot be obtained". Tragic.

By 1870, ladies, even if not yet handy with a large hammer, were busily sand drying half their garden, and assembling the resultant crisped flowers under glass domes, or as flower pictures neatly framed. They were also doing more daring things, like 'fuming' them with sulphur dioxide (covering themselves with newly patented tarpaulins and rubberised gloves). Dried grasses, flattened pansies, roses, fuchsias, lobelias and the rest were used in firescreens, window screens, even as glazed panels for doors (they were carefully sandwiched between two sheets of glass, one sometimes frosted, for boudoir doors).

Then there were all sorts of albums that could be made, perhaps using a little stiff bristled brush to flick droplets of paint around"a bold leaf such as that of Ficus elastica, as a centre, arranging a border of ferns round it; this forms an oblong or heart-shaped space, in which a verse of poetry may either be written or painted and illuminated" More experimental ladies could learn how to 'skeletonise' leaves and seed vessels for winter decoration. 'The best method is given by Mr Robinson in the GARDEN - 4oz. of washing soda are to be dissolved in a quart of boiling water, then add 2oz of slaked quicklime, and boil for 15 minutes. The mixture should be cooled and decanted. Reboil the clear liquid and add the vegetation. Boil for an hour. Drain the flowers, then carefully rub off the flesh. Bleach the skeleton in chloride of lime' It was apparently quite easy to do, and some ladies went so far as to have an outbuilding devoted to the hobby. Less wealthy ones must just have annoyed the cook.

Good plants to use included vine leaves, fig (useful), beech, ivy, the seed vessels of Datura, cape gooseberry and so on. Some of these flowers were later treated with a supersaturated alum solution, poured over bundles of fresh or skeletonised material, then dried so that "a sparkling crystal glistens from every spray" While many middle class women were content to do a little light digging, or to skeletonise fig leaves amidst the fumes of boiling soda, a few took the whole thing much further.

By the 1880's,a Miss J. Loadstone was advertising the brand new variety of pink called 'Mrs Sinkins' (a lovely thing and still available), and calling herself 'the Lady Florist'. Her businesss seems to have prospered for several years, and perhaps she had a substantial market in the large numbers of prosperous spinsters who seemed to exist. By 1897, Mrs Earle could write that "Yesterday, I paid a visit to the Horticultural College at Swanley, with its branch for women students. It immediately struck me as quite possible that a new employment may be developed for women of small means out of the modern increased taste for gardening. " She goes on to suggest that the trainees would be especially useful for small suburban gardens in which lady gardeners could cope well, or be even more suitable for large establishments owned by maiden ladies. Rather fewer ladies went on to become garden 'stars' in their own right. They did this mostly through the field of design. Earlier, Jane Loudon had pointed out in 1838 that "There is scarcely such a thing to be found as a lady who is not fond of flowers; but it is not saying too much, to affirm that there are very few ladies indeed who are competent to lay out a flower garden; though the skill required to do so is within the capacity of every woman who can cut out, and put together, the different parts of female dress'

One who made herself, if not a star, at least a glimmer, was Rosa, who seems to have epitomised the ordinary mid-century lower middle class lady. She wrote for the 'Cottage Gardener' between 1849 and the early 1850's. As far as I can see, she is never named, though seems to have been a spinster with a rather meagre, though private, income. It may be that her father was a nurseryman, for she does say that she was brought up to admire polyanthus, and can't now like inferior sorts. Her strange mix of sententiousness and careful charity seem as typical of the period as was her 'sisterly' preaching the role of 'woman' as keeper of the state's moral fibre. She also seems to have had an engaging desire for drama as well as sentiment, and barely veiled desire to become a novelist. Her writings clearly enforced the class system of the day, where the poor had to work for others rather than subsist from their own ground. Rosa thought that 'No right minded English cottager will desire such a state of things as this. A garden is one of the cottager's best helps - it does not FILL his pot every day, but every day it will yield something to put into the pot. No cottager should desire to have more than an eighth of an acre for his garden. A slip of ground, twenty yards wide and thirty one yards long, will be about the size. " However, the cottagers dwelling should delight the gentry when "covered with woodbines, roses and jessamines" [she suggests taking cuttings, or buying some at only a few shillings each - a week's wages for any real cottager]. "How much of the enjoyment of a happy domestic country house springs from its garden! What tales it may tell, in its silent sweetness, of all that is passing within. It 'Discourses eloquent music'. There are the husband's apple and pear trees, twined by the wife's sweet clematis... all speaking loudly of the happy union of their hearts and tastes. This is one of England's blessed peculiarities - one of the secrets of her peace and power. Let us foster as much as possible the love of gardening, for it involves that holy feeling, the love of HOME"

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And more and more, until she finishes "Usually the outside of our country cottages [are] bare, desolate and neglected; whereas for the smallest outlay, or rather without any outlay at all, those cottages might be clothed with a never-failing leafy ornament, equalling in beauty any that the most lavish expenditure could obtain. . . Whenever we see a well-furnished gable of this character [she means one with a carefully espaliered pear tree] a clean garden and a good boundary hedge: we may always augur well of the moral and industrial character of their possessor. These are not the sort of persons who are ever seeking parish relief. Self-reliance is manifest in the neat and thrifty garden of the humblest cottager" And more still... "Nothing adds so much to the landscape as the picturesque, well-ordered COTTAGES - nothing delights the feelings more than a neat hamlet of snug, cheerful, bowery-looking cottages, with their little gardens brimful of cabbages, potatoes, and onions; and their wickets and porches shaded over with waving flowers. The residences of gentlemen do not please and interest us half as much, unless it is the parsonage, which, to an English heart, is, and must ever be, second only to the venerable pile near which it stands. There is moral beauty, too, in the cultivated cottage garden. Neatness and attendance bespeak activity, diligence, and care; neglect and untidiness tell of the BEER-HOUSE. "

Almost exhausted, she adds a footnote "We recommend to our readers, in connection with this subject, a very excellent tract published this year..." She adored innocent flowers, especially after a morning dew, when "the shining drops tremble and sparkle so prettily in their tiny cups, and they seem so fully to enjoy their pure repast, that it makes me almost wish I could live on dewdrops too"

Rosa pontificated upon taste as well; "I have never been able to decide whether flower beds should be place upon grass or gravel. In the summer, the coolness of a lawn is delightful to the eye and the foot, butin winter the wet and sponginess of grass frequently prevents a lady venturing among her borders, and thereby she loses much pleasure and employment as the year advances" She adored plants such as heliotropes, but with grave reservations; "I have seen them in the open ground, spreading themselves around quite widely, and throwing their spicy shoots across the walk in rich exuberance. They are too fragrant for a room" As the years progressed, she became more interested in cottagers morals than their gardens, and began to write small serialised and improving tales. By 1854 she was writing moralistic novelettes or horror stories - all about dissolute young noblemen being drowned at sea without a moment's repentance, or poor peasants who had NEVER ENTERED A CHURCH (a phrase she says she can scarcely write, though she does so in capitals).

The editors presumably got fed up with such things, and 'My Flowers' was dropped after forty six installments. She wrote: "And now 'My flowers' close. The evening of their short existence has arrived, but before the last leaf falls they would speak one parting word of warning to our hearts. Let our flowers repeat continuously the solemn truth, confirmed by the fall of thousands in our streets, "Surely the people is grass"

They put her onto a new series called OUR VILLAGE WALLS; "Much is doing, in many ways, for the poor, but their health and comfort would be greatly increased if their dwellings were improved where it can be effected. I think much would be altered in this, as in every other case, if men would regard everything they possess as a talent committed to them by God. Men would not dare 'grind the faces of the poor', nor to neglect even their common daily comforts" She still managed to slip in some gardening, as this piece on lily of the valley; "Shady nooks and corners, which are sometimes suffered to be neglected, or filled with stones and rubbish, might become green and fragrant with these lovely flowers. Not an inch of cottage ground should be suffered to be idle. As with the heart, so with the garden. If any spot, however small, is left untilled, up springs an evil weed, or it becomes a wilderness. It is worth noticing HOW VERY SOON this happens. Let us, then, plant with diligence and care the garden of the soil, but let us, with far deeper earnestness, tend the garden of our hearts"

That column didn't last either, and was replaced with HINTS FOR HUMBLE HOUSEHOLDS, then HOME SUGGESTIONS. She remained quite as religiose as ever, and after a first few articles on what to do in suddenly reduced circumstances (perhaps her own were about to be), she vanished forever.

Even if Rosa became more obsessed with morals than flowers, there were quite a few ladies of taste who created elaborate and beautiful gardens in the first half of the Victorian period; in the second half, the emotion that seems to have been associated with womanhood, nostalgia, began to play an important part in garden design, so naturally women became some of its main proponents. Even by 1842 nostalgia for a vanished golden age (perhaps when women had a more active role in the household than that of flower arranger) became apparent in the beginnings of a feeling for herb gardens. "The olitory, or herb-garden, is a part of our horticulture now comparatively neglected; and yet once the culture and culling of simples was as much part of female education as the preserving and tying down of 'rasps and apricocks'". Countrified wives of the past were thought to have invented herbal potions without number to enhance their own and their daughters' charms; 'for then the wife was head gardener'. She had a role.

In the 1870's, one writer felt that "To speak of a posy carries us back to quiet country villages where sweet-scented jasmine and Woodbine, purple Clematis and monthly Roses fight longingly for a place beside the rustic porch; while the little plots in front of white thatch-roofed cottages afforded a variety of bright blossoms for the nosegay of the past" Mrs Earle was, by 1897, in full flight of nostalgia, especially when she remembers her old garden 'The garden had peculiar charms for us, because, though we hardly realised it, such gardens were already beginning to grow out of fashion'. Flower arranging 'stars' like Mrs Oliphant and Miss Hope collected old fashioned flowers. Miss Willmott, Mrs Ewing and Miss Jekyll studied the already vanishing ways of the countryside.

Ironically, one woman who seems not to have been publicly interested in gardening was the queen herself. A writer of the middle of the century, when gardening was still equated with political harmony, and writing of the exhibitions of the London Horticultural Society (now the Royal Horticultural Society) "But they have done more than this: they have brought together, on one common scene of enjoyment, an orderly and happy mass, from the labourer of the soil to the queen upon the throne. We can only have wished that royalty had been pleased to have paid a public as well as a private visit to the gardens. Her Majesty would have gratified the loyalest and best conducted portion of her subjects [and] the cheerful faces of thousands of well-dressed and happy-looking people of every degree. If we wished to show an 'intelligent foreigner' what everyday England really is - what we mean by the middle classes - what by the wealth, the power, the beauty of the gentry of England - what by the courtesy and real unaffectedness of our nobility - we would take him on a horticultural fete-day to see the string of well-ordered carriages and well-filled omnibuses, the fly, the hackney, and the glass-coach taking up their position with the britzcha, the barrouche, and the landau, in one unbroken line from Hyde Park Corner to Turnham Green - bid him look at the good-humoured faces of those who filled them and say whether any other country in the world could, or ever would, turn out a like population.”

There were even quite strong attempt to get children into the garden market; a number of vaguely improving childrens garden books were written, especially the charming 'Mary's Meadow'. But the idea didn't really catch hold of any but the most garden-oriented mothers, though there was the rather curious 'Usable Handbook of Gardening', by James Rennie. This is a guide to Linnean classification for children, and is actually quite fun. The 1834 edition is a new and much enlarged one, with a charming frontispiece of a cottage garden with bee-skeps, slate fences, and round flower beds. The writer points out that gardening is taught in Swiss schools, and hopes that that will soon be the case in Britain, though he begins with the "ORIGIN OF THE WORK, within a very brief period of time, public attention has been strongly directed to bettering the conditions of our peasantry, and in consequence partly of their wants (real in many cases, imaginary in others), having driven them to commit extensive depredations, and in numerous ways to become formidably troublesome. This public attention has given rise to an almost simultaneous rise in England of the system, of allotting, on a moderate rent, from one-fourth to half an acre of land to an individual labourer willing to cultivate the same at his own charge; and, in Scotland, where the peasantry are of a greatly different character, to the proposal of a regular system of instruction in gardening."

"When I was in Switzerland, in the autumn of 1832, nothing surprised me more... than the extraordinary neatness of the gardens attached to cottages and farmhouses, far surpassing in this respect anything I had ever seen in Holland or Belgium, much less in England. Scotland, I am sorry to say, is with a few rare exceptions, around Paisley and other manufacturing districts, quite out of the question, being in this respect little better than Ireland or France".

Everyone kept trying, and even in 1884, a writer was hoping to interest children in newly fashionable "WILD GARDENS for girls and boys", whilst most of their parents were still in love with verbenas. However, there were other possible markets if the children's one failed, and amongst the dead if not amongst the living.

The market for gardens and gardening could naturally b extended to wherever there was a green space,and so gardens for the dead, in cemeteries, became a new area for their expansion. The old graveyards, particularly urban ones, had been pretty frightful, and Loudon describes some in London that had soil so rich in organic material that it was pitch black and almost as sticky. Some of them, too, followed the practice, common in Europe where the pressure of the dead on the space available was equally great, of exhuming the bodies every couple of years, and clearing the land for a new set. This outraged Victorian sensibilities, and Loudon, acute as usual, published his interesting 'On the Laying out of Cemeteries etc' in 1843; He preferred burials in open soil, as in churchyards like Greyfriars, where even under the grandest tombs, bodies lay in winding sheets alone. The reason for this was that decomposition was much more rapid and complete, even if will-o-the-wisps (the flames from the methane produced by the process), did occasionally frighten passers by. "If men of landed property" he added, " however small its extent, were to reflect on this subject, we are persuaded that they would greatly prefer laying their bones in a suitable spot in their own grounds, than having them piled up in any family grave, vault or catacomb whatever" A fine idea when properties remain in the same family, but embarassing if it changes hands frequently.

His book stimulated an interest in the design of cemeteries, and the idea of turning such places into gardens began to take hold. Men like Edward Kemp began to design them for some of the larger cemetery companies; he was even buried in one of his own design. By 1878, William Robinson was admiring some of the most advance cemetery gardens in the world; those of America. There, especially in those designed by J. Jay Smith of Pennsylvania, they were beginning to look like parklands, filled with rare trees and flower beds. Smith had recently been in London looking for sites on which to do something similiar. Forty years ago, when Loudon had suggested that this could be done, the idea had provoked horror. However, the idea was now catching on all over America, and was beginning to take root here. Robinson obtained photographs of the famous 'Spring Grove' by the American landscape designer T. L. Olmstead, and was impressed that only one monument per family was allowed, and that there were complex building regulations to ensure stability (important in a country with such cold winters, when frost-heave could easily destablilise a monument's foundations). He wrote that "the introduction of varieties of evergreens, whose perennial verdure is particularly appropriate to ornamenting places of sepulture, has contributed much to mitigate the bleak desolation of winter and to render the prospect agreeable at all times" Soon, of course, gardeners began to think of all evergreens as funereal, one of the reasons why they are too little planted today. He went on to suggest wild gardens in churchyards, with spring bulbs to give an attractive turf. He wanted no flower beds, but good trees, and roses to drape church walls and tombstones. Soon, all over the country, graves were treated as tiny gardens, with each plot prettified with daisies, lilies, saxifrages and scillas. The rose 'Aimee Vibert' was thought to be the best for twining around a grave's railings.

All of this was, of course, for the middle classes. They, property owners for the most part, had considerable economic strength. However, the working classes, often living in rented housing that varied from the Prince Albert design to cellars of the most dreadful type, were increasingly beginning to wield the political strength of fear. But what use was the upsurge of interest in gardens to the working classes or to the urban poor? They had no ground, no sunny windowsills on which to grow pelargoniums, and no idle hours to fill with arranging flowers under expensive glass domes; their nearest and dearest were buried in scarcely marked graves, and where the planting of roses and forget-me-nots was impossible. The conditions in which many of them lived seriously alarmed their betters. Outbreaks of cholera in overcrowded cities were common, and the terrible epidemic at Exeter, which caused not only vast casualties, but also outbreaks of riotous, even libidinous, behaviour amongst those at risk, concentrated the minds of the propertied classes. Soon surveys of the worst urban areas were being made.

One, of Leeds, showed that of five hundred and sixty eight streets, only sixty eight were paved, ninety six were neither paved nor drained or even cleared of refuse. One street with one hundred and seventy six families had not been touched for fifteen years. Many were permanently flooded with sewage. Two hundred were crossed with clothes lines. Five hundred houses had dark cellars that were actually lived in. All this was combined with four hundred and fifty one pubs, ninety eight brothels, two churches and thirty nine meeting houses. The death rate in a clean street was one in thirty six; in dirty street, it was one in twenty three.

As gardens and gardening were already though of as a social stabiliser, it is not surprising that the provision of open spaces in the new industrial cities, or even in the hearts of ancient ones, became a priority. Though there were of course fine gardens surrounded by the terraces and circuses of the grander Georgian developments all over the country, they were mostly for local residents, not for the propertyless poor (as some still remain). London, Edinburgh, and a few other major cities had parklands near the city centres, often once royal or ecclesiastical hunting parks. However, these rarely advanced the stabilising love of flowers, or offered attractive places to promenade, nor attracted the funds of wealthy philanthropists.

By 1835, the Botanical Magazine could say that "Public gardens are just beginning to be thought of in England [there were many more in formation in France, Germany and Holland]; and, like most other great domestic improvements in our country, they have originated in the spirit of the people, rather than in that of the government. On the Continent, the contrary has generally been the case..."

"The desire for public parks, felt by a portion of the people in England, has given rise to societies for their production; and hence, we have the gardens of the Zoological Society in London, and a few others such as the Botanical Garden in Liverpool, Hull etc. The formation of these gardens by public associations may be regarded as an indication of a rising taste for this kind of enjoyment; and, as a farther indication of it, we may refer to the favourable reception given to the bill brought forward during the last session of parliament, by Mr Buckingham, for establishing a public park at every town and village where a majority of the rate-paying inhabitants expressed a desire to have one..." It was the rate-payers who felt at risk.

In 1851, the need was clearly gowing apace, for in that year the predominantly urban manufacturing population just begun to exceed the less volatile agricultural one. Thirty years later, there were twice as many urban poor as rural ones. While for those in the country side, a garden was well known to be essential to their physical survival, no-one quite knew what to do for city workers. While the allottment idea took root, it was clearly impossible, in spite of the vast expansion in rail (especially) and road investments (which made trade and industry more vigorous and profitable), to provide most urban families with a plot of cultivable land. However, by the 1880's, a town like Nottingham had ten thousand allotments.

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Even in the countryside, the idea prospered, and various gentlemen or secretaries of committees published their arrangements for such things in the hope that others would follow. One such was 'SOME ACCOUNT OF A SYSTEM OFGARDEN LABOUR, acted upon in the Parish of Springfield, Essex, with a few general remarks on Cottage-Gardening by Rev. Arthur Pearson, 1837'. The author describes how eight acres were divided into allotments at six shilling for each of the sixty. They were alloted to men of the village by draw, and were thought big enough to help the cottagers finance without taking up too much of their employers' time.

At least in the early part of the period, and particularly during the Chartist excitements, this rate of return per acre was almost more profitable to the proprietor than farming the land, and there were various proposals for breaking up entire estates into cottagers holdings (those proposals don't seem to have been taken up). For at least some allotment holders, it all worked, and all sorts of new pleasures were discovered. One correspondent to the 'Cottage Gardener' in 1850 wrote that he had"...a habit of drinking intoxicating drinks to excess; and at the time I first saw the placards announcing your publication, I was in a state of great nervous debility. So much was my whole frame ennervated that my arms hung almost paralysed by my side... Such was my state then; thank God, it is not so now. I became a subscriber, and have since succeeded in getting an allotment of four hundred yards..." His health and vigour were restored.

Others had to go abroad for 'allotments', and in 1842 the The New Zealand Company was offering allotments in that country at rents at three hundred pounds for one hundred and fifty acres in the countryside, or fifty acres in the suburbs, or for a single acre near the centre of Wellington. Apart from allotments in the modern form, various hybrids developed, including some thought up by Joseph Paxton (though his were hardly designed for the urban poor). In 'Design for forming Subscription Gardens in the Vicinity of large Commercial Towns' of 1834, he proposed a sort of allotment scheme for tradesmen and others who, because of their business, had to live in the centres of cities, and whose means did not allow them a foothold in the country. Presumably having a site in mind, he suggested dividing up the twelve and a half acres into fifty gardens of about a quarter of an acre, which would be enough for fruit and vegetables. Each section was to be walled off for protection and and the safety of the produce. The remaining part of the grounds were to be set up as a botanic garden cum flower garden of four acres, no doubt for the use of the subscribers' womenfolk. Subscribers to the botanical garden were to be allowed not to have an allotment and vice versa. The cost was to be £16. 2. 0d per annum if the quarter acre patch was managed by a hired labourer, and with a small 'sub' to the botany garden.

Paxton, of course, designed many fully urban parks, starting with the still heavily Victorian Princes Park in Liverpool. He was working on this from 1842 - 1843. He was thereafter soon at work on Upton Park in Slough, and then Birkenhead (unique in that internal traffic was kept separated from external and 'through' traffic). The grandly named 'People's Park', Halifax, followed in 1856-57, and he worked on various Scottish projects at Dunfermline, Dundee and possibly in Glasgow.

One of the problems with parks (and Princes Park is a notable example), was that, in big cities, they offered such an attractive amenity that property prices in the immediate vicinity soon rose to such an extent that the land was no longer available to the sort of public whom were most expected to benefit. Thus there are parks which still retain much of their Victorian and philanthropic flavour, but which are mostly quite ringed by vast merchants houses rather than the tenements of the poor.

However, by 1877, such problems were not too much noticed, and parks were being created over all of the country; Finsbury Park was in formation, dahlias and roses were in full flood at the Crystal Palace. Liverpool and Birkenhead had six parks, of which five were new or just completed. Once the land prices had risen, the parks themselves became immensely valuable assets which were endangered by the same speculative pressures that had created that value. Soon, property developers were nibbling ant the edges of some of the 'weaker' parks, and in 1851 even Colchester Botanic garden was actually being auctioned for building land.

In London, popular and attractive places like Victoria Park (designed by the author Joseph Newton, of Oxford Terrace, and whom we have already met), were soon under threat from development at its margins. Unlike poor Colchester, this provoked considerable public concern. Here, incidentally, the park had been planted up with many rare trees and shrubs after the big Loddiges sale. Even better, the vast subtropical bedding schemes were displayed without railings, whereas in Hyde Park, the lush foliage was kept firmly behind bars. When they weren't being eyed hungrily by developers, parks were acting as a model for gardening taste (a role which they still, alas, play). By 1869, Burbidge could aver that "It is to our great public gardens that we must look for improved examples of garden decoration, and if their contents consisted chiefly of plants well arranged that would withstand our climate, that would be all the more desirable, inasmuch as these public examples are seen by thousands annually, and are copied as closely as possible in many private gardens throughout the country.... "

At Battersea, the park he had in mind when writing, the bedding, whether subtropical or hardy had long been much admired. It was there that the curious practice of having what were called "cocked-up flower beds" took hold. These were in effect raised beds with 'swept up' grass sides. The fashion came to London via Paris. It was first used there for sub-tropical bedding, for it was though that the inclined sides of the bed would absorb extra heat and so make the plants feel more at home. However, it caught on, and was soon used indiscriminately, for all sorts of plants, all over the country. Battersea and Victoria parks were two of the most expensive to run, costing, in 1877, seven thousand, eight hundred and twenty four pounds, and eight thousand, six hundred and thirteen pounds respectively. By contrast, Kew, far more sumptuous, cost nearly twenty one thousand, whereas Richmond cost three, and Edinburgh Botanic gardens less than two. They were all good value for money, for instance "The East End has Victoria Park; and during the spring and summer months this garden is a most enjoyable one, plenty of bright colours being afforded by the parterre plants; and the herbaceous perennials, which are grouped very tastefully along the margin of the shrubbery borders, are also highly effective".

The interest in planning public spaces in the midst of rapidly expanding cities was soon associated with an interest in town planning, and the creation of new and attractive cities was soon seen as another palliative to the problem of social unrest and unhappiness. It was the lack of planning of the structure of the old cities themselves that was an obstacle of progress, not just their lack of provisions for the needy and the oppressed. Of course, cities had never before had to cope with so many humans or with such vast diversity of activity. It was, in a way, natural that those concerned with garden and landscape design should take an interest in these problems. William Robinson travlled extensively looking at what other countries were doing in this field, and in 1878, published the widely read 'Parks and Gardens of Paris', in an attempt to introduce the best ideas of the newly emparked French capital to the rapidly worsening British one.

He wrote: ". . I think it is very clear that many quarters of London, beautiful in themselves, are greatly lowered in value owing to bad approaches. A good and simple system of broad tree planted roads, radiating from the centre to the suburbs, and connected by outer circular roads, would tend to make all parts of the town more equal in value, and would go far to prevent that terrible isolation of the poor in various parts of the city, the misery of which is at present a by-word throughout the world.... "

"A most crying evil of this period of change when masses of workers are steadily deserting the country for the city, is that our towns are still built upon a plan worthy of the Dark Ages, and only barely justifiable where the breath of the meadow sweeps through the high street". He points out that many people associate this sort of major planning with autocratic government, while he himself appears forget that there's been no English Napoleon (which, in the light of the Howardian lectures which we meet below, is to say the least, ironic). He points out that it has been democratic France that has done the best and most economic re-vamping of a major capital, though, characteristically, he regrets that many Parisian parks have been designed by botanists, architects and engineers, not gardeners.

"But improvements" he writes, "will probably never come through botanists, whose true and very sufficient field is the world, with the herbarium in which to store their treasures; nor through architects and engineers because their own work is different even in kind.... The only direct way onwards is through the trained and artistic gardener... The art of garden design is yet in a very barbarous state, only a few monotonous notes are, as a rule, got out of it, and we shall not know its true capabilities till there is a school of young men trained for it from the beginning, and devoted to it heart and soul".

The urban squares in Paris were open to all the public, and of this Robinson heartily approved. "What bright and refreshing spots would these be in the midst of our huge brick and stone labyrinths... and if the poor children who now grow up amidst the filth and impurities of the alleys and courts, were allowed to run about these playgrounds, so much healthier for the body and mind! We have them all ready, a word may open them. At present the gardens in our squares are painful mementos of exclusiveness. They who need them least, monopolise them' [a quote from 'Guesses at Truth']. Robinson then illustrated the plans of several of the London private gardens of which he approved, though, at least on paper, they all look awfully dull and suburban (it's difficult not to wonder if this was perhaps because they followed Robinson's planting ideas).

He then quotes from a paper by a Mr Robert Mitchell (a resident in Paris) about the new squares: "These masses of vegetation widely distributed amongst the most populous neighbourhoods, cleanse the air by absorbing the miasmic exhalations, thus enabling everyone to breathe freely..."

"Now, thank God, this dark picture [of the old city and its fevers and fervours, and of children passing their days in squalor] has become bright. Within a couple of steps of the poor man's house there are trees, flowers and gravel walks where his children can run about, and seats where their parents may sit together and talk. Family ties are strengthened, and the workman soon understands that there are calmer and more moral pleasures than those of the wine-shop... Some time ago, while walking through the Square du Temple, where hundreds of children were running and jumping and filling their lungs with the country air that has thus been brought into Paris, we could not help saying to ourselves that, strengthened and developed by continual exercise, these youngsters would one day form a true race of men, which would give the State excellent soldiers, good labourers for our farms, and strong artisans for our factories". Many of the boys must have taken part in the first World War.

The French seem to have had no problem with vandalism, though many proposals for public parks in both London and Edinburgh foundered on the belief that they would never survive. Robinson was reduced to proposing naively that the 'exclusive' London squares, which all had an outer belt of privet and lilac to screen the interior, should have 'peeps' cut through them to provide those without keys with a view of the beauties within; a quick route to revolution. In Paris, the squares had proper play areas for children, often as an expansion f'rom the main paths, shaded with trees, and with benches for nannies or mothers. In London, there was nothing comparable; all the available space was devoted to elaborate parterres that made play impossible. He wanted avenues and boulevards for London, and was all for opening up what he saw as the richest city in the world, where property was both cheap and gimcrack (unlike Paris). "Our narrow streets, and flimsy houses, and the want of anything like a generally recognised plan, are worthy only of a period when men first herded together within walls for security, not of the Victorian era"

Of course, as soon as there were reasonable numbers of parks in British cities, their first attacker was, naturally, William Robinson, who disliked the design of their shrubberies, which he though were done only on paper. "The ground plan of a garden has no business to look pretty, and flowing curves on paper are almost certain to be tame and ugly curves when carried out in walks and beds. Gardens should be designed and staked out on the ground they are to occupy, - not drawn on paper and then transferred to the ground. The main difference between real medieval building and modern imitations of it is that the old work was staked out on the ground from a rough sketch... modern work fails in picturesque effect because it always looks like a built drawing. Our garden have exactly the same fault. . "

In 1899, as a development to all the discussion about new sorts of city and town, the Garden City Association was formed to promote a slightly mythic fusion of countryside (and nostalgia for the Golden Age), with the inevitable needs of industrial society. Set up by E H Howard, a somewhat eccentric man whose book on the subject ('Garden Cities of Tomorrow') created enormous public interest, the association became the focus for all conditions of men, from angry workers looking for better conditions, failed craftsmen, temperance workers, as well as wealthy philanthropists like Mr William Lever, and Mr George Cadbury.

Howard's ideal was a development of the allotment movement, and was to provide smallholdings cheap enough for small operatives from towns to lease, and still make a profit. However, 'Tomorrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform' proposed an idealised plan of avast circular garden city, with central gardens containing a cluster of museums, libraries, concert halls, a town hall and so on. These were in turn to be ringed by a park, bordered by an immense Crystal Palace, used as an annular shopping street and winter gardens. Then were to come a ring of houses and gardens, then an outermost ring of factories (interestingly enough for jam, boots, and bicycles). Beyond this again was to be a ring of allotments, then of farms. All were to be linked with radial and annular roads, and an outer railway serviced the industrial and productive areas.

Dotted amongst farms were to be various charitable and philanthropic institutions, orphanages and so on. Everything was to be owned by the municipality, and financed by rent and rates. However, the scheme didn't stop there, for he proposed suggestions for linking six such peripheral garden cities to 'Central City' by canal and 'tube'. The intervening areas of farm and forest were to be scattered with 'Homes for Waifs', epileptic farms, insane asylums (presumably for people for whom the garden city had been too much), convalescent homes, homes for inebriates, colleges for the blind and cemeteries.

In 1904, a company was established called 'First Garden City Limited', which bought a large estate at Letchworth which the association's magazine aimed at promoting. It rapidly became a big movement with international connections, holding a vast range of meetings, seminars and lectures. It all sounded wonderful, and Letchworth was intended to become a health-giving and rather nostalgic mix of small industries, small holdings, cottars and craftsmen (presumably with gardens filled with old fashioned flowers).

In fact, it developed a slightly more sinister tone, perhaps best exemplified by a speech of Rider Haggard's. 'Whatever may be said against smallholdings, I am persuaded that they,in conjunction with such other remedies as I have referred to, will serve to keep upon the land that clan of English yeomen which is absolutely necessary to the stability of our Empire. We need the strong and steady and equal-minded man who can only be bred upon the land. For this purpose, the fair lands of England have been made our heritage; not for the purposes of pleasure or ostentation, but for the growing of the nation's food, and more than that, for the breeding of a healthy, industrious and contented people!' A little later he comments on 'The Nightmare of Our Towns': "The scarcity of work is a difficult factor to overcome... But the Garden City will create a labour market marked by the absence of unfavourable conditions, and the inhabitants will be protected by the presence and existence of all that tends to make life pleasant and bright...'

'In modern towns, the environment of our less fortunate classes is horrible ... We have in Manchester thousands of children.... [who] knew not a single English flower by sight, knew no common birds except the sparrow, nor anything that is found in the country. "

"This absence of nature, this gloom coming from the crowding together of houses, the gloom also coming from the horrible impurity of the air, and other awful conditions, make an environment so powerful, especially when it is aided by the public-house, that the wonder is not that we have such a large number of unemployables, but that we have such a large proportion of people who can be trusted, and who will do work when they can get it...'

The Association became very keen on German town planning examples, and many lectures were given by German technical attaches to the London embassy. Many illustrations were published of suggested model cottages (just as they had been in the early years of the nineteenth century), often in a minuscule Queen Anne style. However, the most popular ones were shown in the 'Cheap Cottages Exhibition'; there were numbers of photographs of prefabricated cottages erected by Messers Krupps of Barnhof. The irony of it all... Perhaps the leaders of the movement had followed a favourite Emmerson quote too well: 'To live content with small means... to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages with an open heart. . '

end

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 Copyright David Stuart 2004